Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell

Pub Date: Aug. 2006

Fiction (Adult)

208 pgs.

“The book is always better.” I often agree with this statement, but there are exceptions. Many times, a wonderful book produces an equally wonderful film, and, in rare cases, a film can be much better than the book it’s based on.  In honor of the Oscar nominations that were announced last week, I want to take a moment to look at the book behind one of the Best Picture nominations: a slim volume by Daniel Woodrell called Winter’s Bone.

The film of the same title, directed by Debra Granik, was in theaters last year and starred Jennifer Lawrence and John Hawkes.  The story concerns a teenage girl, Ree Dolly, growing up in Missouri’s Ozark mountains.  Her father, a methamphetamine cooker, is MIA and Ree is a struggling caretaker for her two younger siblings and emotionally damaged mother. Then the local sheriff shows up and informs Ree that her father has jumped bail, and if he is not found the Dolly family will lose what little they have: their home. The film is bleak but beautiful, and fully deserves its multiple nominations.  Watching this play out on screen made me curious about the novel that made the film possible.

Winter’s Bone‘s characters are as fleshed out in the novel as they are on screen.  Ree is a classic underdog: she has been through hell but she’s tough and honorable, and you absolutely want to root for her.  Family relationships are obviously important to Woodrell, and this is explored deeply in both the film and the book.  Ree is fiercely devoted to her younger siblings and her mother, and she expects that her large extended family will defend her in the same way.  Ree even has some pleasant memories of her absentee, drug-addled father.  However, as Ree learns, your family can be both your biggest protectors and your biggest enemies.  Her relationship with her father’s brother, her Uncle Teardrop, is particularly complicated. The Dolly clan is large, sprawling, and intimidating, and Ree ultimately must confront her blood to uncover her father’s whereabouts.

Woodrell’s diminutive book is barely more than 200 pages, but it certainly packs a punch.  It’s difficult to produce a novel that is this short but this fully realized and meaty, but Woodrell does it perfectly.  Upon finishing Winter’s Bone, the reader is not left with a sense of something missing or a feeling of unfulfillment; the reader’s (at least, this reader’s!) only thought is, what else can I read by this guy? Read the book–and see the movie!

-Becky